Module 4

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Module 4 - Costing Educational Media and Technologies: Traditional Media

How do we know what is the best media and technology to use when teaching distance education? Do we include the latest and greatest gadget just to stay current with technologies? Do we include every media and technology that is possible to make sure we're covering the learning styles and needs of every student? Obviously, no we don't. In this module, we explored costing educational technologies. Conference topics / questions were specific to:

  • Media Equivalence - Fantastic quote by R. E. Clark - "media are mere vehicles that deliver instruction but do not influence student achievement any more than the truck that delivers our groceries causes changes of nutrition." Very interesting statement, but also very open for debate. Are media equivalent? Does any one medium offer better, more efficient, and more effective teaching than another medium? I believe it can depend on the topic, the medium, and the student. My response to this conference:
    • Just a quick comment regarding the topic of time compression - where the conference post states that learning processes can be speeded up b some media more than others. I tend to agree with this statement, of course, depending on the learning situation and the student. If I am learning how to create an Excel spreadsheet where I need to create graphs, it is much easier and faster for me to learn by watching a short video clip with someone showing me how to do it, then by simply reading "Excel for Dummies." I think wealth of medium that is available today is SO beneficial for our diverse audience of students - if it is cost effective and efficient to serve those students. ~ Nancy
  • Student Learning Hours - The premise here is that all media are equivalent in their effectiveness, does it matter what we use for cost planning purposes? Well, it depends on which side of the debate you are on!
  • Print and Correspondence - This conference reminded me, as all other classes so far in my MDE program, that print materials remain the most important medium in open distance learning and distance education. Text can be in the printed or digital format, and the costs are almost identical when looking at their production and distribution. Although printed materials are less costly to develop and more costly to distribute, digital materials are more costly to develop and less costly to distribute.
  • Radio and Audio Cassettes - Radio appears to be the perfect medium! As in the comparison of production/development of print materials, radio and audio cassettes have a similar comparison: radio is more costly to develop and less costly to develop, while audio cassettes are less costly to develop and more costly to distribute or store. It's suggested that institutions with smaller numbers might benefit from audio, while the larger institutions could benefit from radio.
  • Television and Video Cassettes - You guessed it, obviously the most expensive medium we could possibly have - at least until now - who knows what Web 2.0 and all the new technology will create for yet another tool to use in distance education!

Just to get an idea of the varying costs in developing a course, here is a breakdown I found on the Internet in a Rumble article dated September 2001 (http://php.auburn.edu/outreach/dl/pdfs/Costs_and_Costing_of_Networked_Learning.pdf):

Table 1: Cost of developing a three-unit internet course (US$)
(Arizona Learning Systems, 1998)
Course outlines and assignments 6,000
Text 12,000
Text with reference material 18,000
Text with reference material and images 37,500
Audio and video 120,000
Simulations 250,000
Virtual Reality 1,000,000

A large portion of the required readings came from a fabulous book - Technology, E-Learning and Distance Education (2nd Edition), by Tony Bates (2005), in addition to some relevant articles noted in the reference section below by Curran, Rumble, Berge, and Donaldson.

Highlights, recollections, and "aha" moments from the Bates readings included:

Chapter 1 - Emerging trends: convergence and specialization
  • "One of the basic premises of this book is that newer technologies such as the World Wide Web are not necessarily better (or worse) for teaching or learning than older technologies such as print or video-conferencing...the choice of technology should be driven not by its novelty but by the needs of the learners and the context in which we are working" (p. 3).
  • "Although open learning and distance education can mean different things, the one thing they both have in common is an attempt to provide alternative means of high quality education or training for those who either cannot take conventional, campus-based programmes, or choose not to" (p. 6)
  • "Choice of technology should be driven by the needs of the subject matter and of the students" (p. 9)
  • "Increased access and equal opportunity have not been the driving forces behind many e-learning initiatives; commercialization and profit have been the drivers" (p. 15)
  • "The value of distance education is its ability to reach learners not well served by conventional educational institutions. The value of technology in teaching is its ability to meet better the newly emerging educational needs of an information society, and to improve the quality of learning" (p. 16).

Chapter 2 - The impact of technology on the organization of distance education
  • "The original media of print, television and audio still provide the core learning materials for most of their programmes, although information technology plays an increasingly important part in many courses" (p. 18).
  • "Perhaps the most interesting development in recent years has been the increased interest shown by commerce and industry in distance teaching and especially in e-learning" (p. 30).
  • SkillSoft Inc. - WOW - 2,800 clients, 4.5 million registered online users, and over 300,000 learning objects! (p. 31)
  • "Distance education is certainly changing, with many more players, different forms of organization, improved pedagogy through the use of more interactive technologies, and increasing commercialization" (p. 38)
  • "Distance education...remains a powerful tool for economic development and personal advancement" (p. 40).

Chapter 3 - Selecting and using technologies in distance education
  • "History suggests that new technologies do not necessarily replace older technologies...to survive, the older media have had to change and hence they have become more focused and specialized" (p. 41)
  • Media = "generic forms of communication associated with particular ways of presenting knowledge" (p. 43)
  • Technologies = "satellite, cable, video-cassette and so on" - a delivery channel that incorporate a "unique blend of symbol systems and formats" (p. 43)
  • Synchronous - technologies that operate in real time; Asynchronous - technologies that can be assessed at any time (p. 44)
  • ACTIONS model - an analysis model for selecting the appropriate technology:
    • Access
    • Costs
    • Teaching and learning
    • Interactivity and user-friendliness
    • Organizational issues
    • Novelty
    • Speed (p. 49-50)

Chapter 4 - Print
  • "Even today, printed materials, in the form of textbooks, dominate as the main technology of teaching in formal education, training and distance education" (p. 67)
  • Benefits of print:
    • Access - readily available and accessible, especially to the poor, socially disadvantaged (p. 69)
    • Teaching and Learning - powerful medium
    • Interaction and Ease of Use - print can be structured to encourage interaction, print is self-sufficient and portable
    • Costs
  • Weaknesses of print:
    • "Limitations in assisting students who have failed to understand parts of the text and its difficulty in providing feedback for questions" (p. 71)
    • Timely delivery of materials (especially with distance education and international students)
    • Speed - "long time to develop high quality printed material, and once produced, difficult to change" (p. 88)

Chapter 5 - Television and video
  • "...television and video come in the most diverse forms, have arguably the greatest potential for teaching and learning, and are probably the least well used" (p. 90)
  • Video can be delivered through terrestrial broadcast transmission, cable services, satellite, digital transmission, video cassettes, and DVDs - very flexible medium for education
  • Access to these technologies can be at home, work, and communities or "local centres" (p. 96).
  • Bates states five reasons for educational broadcasting:
    • Personalizing the teaching
    • Improving learning efficiency
    • Pacing
    • Student recruitment
    • Academic credibility (p. 98-99)
  • "For learning to take place, video materials have to be carefully designed, following sound instructional as well as 'good' television production principles" (p. 113)

Chapter 6 - Radio, audio cassettes and compact disc players
  • "Audio is perhaps the most undervalued of all the media...Radio is accessible to more people than any other single technology" (p. 115)
  • Audio cassettes can be used as a "substitute teacher" by:
    • Talking students through parts of the printed materials
    • Talking about real objects that need to be observed
    • Talking students through practical procedures
    • Analyzing human interaction
    • Providing feedback on student activities
  • "...radio is a quick and easy medium for students and teachers to use" (p. 126)

Chapter 7 - Web-based learning: access and teaching issues
  • "...bandwidth has been a constraint on the use of the Internet for teaching" (p. 129)
  • Why so popular? Doesn't everyone have a computer? No, they don't. That's why communities and institutions provide computer centers for students.
  • "The most common way ... of supporting classroom teaching is to create a course Web site, for use by students outside of classroom time...from very simple to quite elaborate" (p. 133).
  • Why web-based learning? "The main educational rationale for online learning is that it enables students to learn in a different way from traditional classroom teaching (or print-based distance education)" (p. 139)
  • "In general, there is strong evidence to suggest that asynchronous online learning has considerable educational advantages over print-based distance education, provided that students have access to the technology" (p. 151)

Chapter 8 - Web-based learning: costs and organizational issues
  • Budgeting!!!!!!!!!
    • Revenues
      • Enrollments, student fees, admission fees, etc.
    • Expenditures
      • Planning and management
      • Course development
      • Course maintenance
      • Deliver and operations
      • Overheads
      • Financing costs
      • Profit and loss
  • Organizational Issues - to complicate matters even more!
    • Lone Rangers (I have seen this example the most...)
    • Boutique course development
    • Collegial materials development
    • Project management
  • "Web-based learning does not have the same economies of scale found with either print or broadcasting...more importantly, rather than economies of scale, Web-based learning offers the potential of economies of scope" (p. 173)

Chapter 9 - Audio-, video- and Web-conferencing: access and teaching issues
  • Four two-way synchronous technologies: audio-conferencing, narrow-band video-conferencing, broad-band video conferencing, and synchronous conferencing over the Internet (p. 175)
  • Modes of synchronous conferencing: individual to individual, instructor to a single/remote group, instructor to remote individuals, instructor to multiple groups, self-help groups (p. 182-183)
  • Arguments cited in this chapter for the use of synchronous conferencing?
    • It most closely resembles conventional face-to-face teaching
    • asynchronous approaches to learning has disadvantages

Chapter 10 - Audio-, video- and Web-conferencing: costs and organizational issues
  • Technology is still evolving, so it's really hard to estimate costs; newer technologies may decreases costs, but in general, "costs will vary depending on the particular technology, as well as on the actual circumstances of use" (p. 193)
  • "Audio-conferencing is almost always cheaper than the cost of a face-to-face tutorial when the travel costs of all participants are taken into account" (p. 194)
  • Video-conferencing was a luxury that many could not afford in the 1970s and 1980s; however, costs have dropped dramatically because of new technologies and broadband Internet access available to so many individuals today (p. 198)
  • "There are two reasons why asynchronous technologies tend to be cheaper. The first is that asynchronous technologies can achieve economies of scale resulting from the same materials being reused by new cohorts of students. The second, and more significant, is that asynchronous technologies shift the work from the teacher to the student" (p. 208)
  • "In general, higher cost technologies should be used only when they can demonstrate clear learning gains or other educational benefits over lower cost technologies" (p. 208)

References
Bates, A. W. (2005). Technology, e-learning and distance education. London New York: Routledge.
Curran, C. (2008). Online learning and the university. In W. J. Bramble, Panda, S (Ed.), Economics of distance and online learning (pp. 26-51). London: Kogan Page..
Rumble, G. (2004). The costs and costing of networked learning. In G. Rumble (Ed.), Papers and debates on the costs and economics of distance education and online learning (pp. 139-162). Oldenburg: Bibliotheks- und Informationssystem der Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg.
Rumble, G. (2004). E-Education: Whose Benefits, whose costs? [2001]. In G. Rumble (Ed.), Papers and debates on the costs and economics of distance education and online learning (Vol. 7, pp. 119-138). Oldenburg: Bibliotheks- und Informationssystem der Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg.
Zane Berge, & Donaldson, C. (2008). Cost-benefit of online learning. In W. J. Bramble, Panda, S. (Ed.), Economics of distance and online learning (pp. 179-194). London : Kogan Page